Video review: "Legend"

“Legend” is a solid gangster picture and a showcase for the versatile Tom Hardy, who played both halves of the infamous Kray sibling duo, who ruled London’s criminal underside in their 1960s heyday.

Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, based on a book by John Pearson, it tries a little too obviously to be the “British ‘Goodfellas’” -- but if that’s the worst thing you can say about a movie, that isn’t too shabby.

The challenge for Hardy is playing two men who outwardly are very similar but personality-wise are quite different. Reggie Kray was smooth, dapper, an ex-boxer and consummate ladies’ man who liked to run swank nightclubs and hobnob with celebrities. Ronnie was a sociopath -- he’d been committed to psychiatric hospital -- belligerent and bisexual. He was devoted to Reggie but resented the way people were drawn to him, so Ronnie repelled others as a way to compensate.

Even the way the twins talk diverges in Hardy’s interpretation. Ronnie sounds as if he has a mouthful of marbles, through which his harsh cockney accent bleats and spits.

(Hardy, while a monumentally gifted actor, seems to have a contemptuous disregard for comprehensibility. You’ll want to watch this one with the subtitles on.)

Emily Browning plays Frances, who gets courted and wed by Reggie, which she soon comes to regret as they are separated by his partying and prison stints. She narrates the film, performing much the same role as the William Holden character in “Sunset Boulevard.”

Also turning up are Paul Bettany as a rival mobster; David Thewlis as the Krays’ right-hand man; Christopher Eccleston as the London Yard detective on the case; Chazz Palminteri as an American mafia figure offering a business relationship, and danger; and Taron Egerton as Ronnie’s volatile boy toy.

It’s a wonderful-looking film, full of mod clothes and cars and tunes. It really does emulate the style of “Goodfellas,” with breezy scenes intermixed with bursts of horrific violence. These movies are not just trying to depict gangsters as interesting figures, but sex them up into iconic anti-heroes.

Extra features including a feature-length commentary track by Helgeland and a making-of documentary, “Creating the Legend.”

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Video review: "42"

Saccharine and starry-eyed, "42" places Jackie Robinson on a pedestal and peers in awe at the baseball icon. Writer/director Brian Helgeland's biopic of the first African-American to play major league baseball tries and largely succeeds to get at the real man behind the myth. But it also ladles on the hagiography in portions too huge to choke down comfortably.

Chadwick Boseman aptly plays Robinson, one of the top players in the Negro League who was carefully selected to integrate baseball. Branch Rickey, the legendary general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, knew he needed a player who could not only hit and field, but also accept the slings and arrows of white society without showing any public protest.

The result was a trying rookie year for Robinson and his wife (Nicole Beharie) as he endured racial taunts and threats from fans, opposing teams and even his own dugout.

Helgeland takes us behind the scenes to show us what the constant assault on his dignity cost Robinson -- in one crackling scene, serenely accepting the racial epithets hurled at him by an opposing manager, then shattering his bat in frustration off the field.

Harrison Ford is excellent as Rickey, a crotchety wheeler-dealer with a secret sentimentality he labors hard to conceal. At first the performance seems cartoony and over-the-top. But Ford slyly shows us how Rickey used his outsized personality and kitschy mannerisms as a prop to get his way.

The movie's best moments are in exploring the relationship between baseball player and boss, the traditional power dynamic swaying and crumbling as the men development genuine respect and affection for each other.

"42" may too often indulge in hero worship instead of character development. But there's no denying this film packs a humdinger of a wallop.

Extra features are rather disappointing. The DVD edition comes only with a single featurette, "Stepping into History," about the integration of baseball. Upgrading to the Blu-ray version adds two more mini-documentaries: "Full-Contact Baseball" and "The Legacy of the Number 42."

For a movie that hits a solid double dramatically, it's a shame they saw fit to bunt on the video goodies.

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Review: "42"

The Jackie Robinson biopic, "42," is a worthwhile film, but it could have been a much better one.

Writer/director Brian Helgeland goes straight for starry-eyed hagiography in the story of the first black player to integrate major league baseball. Although it strives to show a complete picture of an icon, it still puts him on a pedestal so high the audience sometimes has trouble glimpsing the real man.

The movie is effective in showing the behind-the-scenes struggle endured by Robinson during his first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and especially in his relationship with Branch Rickey, the gutsy general manager who broke the color barrier by drafting Robinson.

I just wish Helgeland could have been a little more restrained in his idol worship. At nearly ever turn, his film takes a double-dip into gooey sentiment ... and then it spoons up some more.

Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford are a good pairing as Robinson and Rickey. Boseman is a decent physical match for Robinson, and his steel glare and clenched jaw muscles cue us in to how the player struggled to shrug off the taunts and insults he endured from fans, opposing players and even his own teammates.

As everyone knew, if Robinson responded to the provocations with anything more than quiet resolve, he would be blamed for the incident and the cause of integration set back for years. Helgeland and Boseman show us Robinson's on-the-field heroics, then take us back behind the dugout to show him splintering his bat against the wall in frustration.

Alan Tudyk has a terrific small part as a racist opposing manager who strides out onto the field every time Robinson comes up to bat to hurl a constant stream of vile epithets. Tudyk is pitch-perfect in representing  the Jim Crow mentality, where white people thought it was their God-given right to put "coloreds" in their place.

Ford is very good in his first "old man" role. Yes, I know he played "old Indy" in the last Indiana Jones film, but that's not really the same thing -- he was still portraying a vibrant man defined by his physicality and manly confidence. Here he's playing a 66-year-old (that's actually five years younger than Ford himself) who is stooped and bent, his jowls working furiously underneath caterpillar eyebrows.

It's a patriarchal role, and Ford subsumes his superman persona completely. At first we think the performance is all exterior -- the way he worries his cigar, speaks with a distinctive accent and furrows his brow at young whippersnappers. But Ford goes deeper in later scenes, revealing a man deeply bothered about the way the sport he loves divides players unnecessarily, and determined to do something about it before his own time is up.

At first Rickey insists to anyone that asks that bringing in Robinson is simply a smart move, both in terms of baseball and business. Robinson is a terrific young player with a great future ahead of him, and more black people would be apt to buy tickets.

"Dollars ain't black and white," he teases. "They're green. Every dollar's green."

But in the end the relationship between manager and player becomes much more.

The script is filled with plenty of clunky, corny dialogue. "God designed me to last," Robinson intones during a low moment. His adoring wife Ray (Nicole Beharie) has little to do but smile fetchingly from the stands and spout her own tin-ear invocations: "Please God, let him be seen for what he can do."

The good definitely outweighs the bad in "42," and anyone who's a fan of baseball or history will likely be highly engrossed by this tale. I just wish this Cracker Jack of a movie had dialed down the sugar.

Video review: "Robin Hood"

Here would be my one-word review of "Robin Hood": Unnecessary.

The fabled bandit of Sherwood Forest has been depicted innumerable times, almost since the dawn of cinema. Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland mix bits and pieces of the various Robin Hood legend for their own pastiche that never convinces us of its essential reason for existing.

Russell Crowe plays Robin Longstride, a humble archer in Richard the Lionheart's army, recently returned from the Crusades. He impersonates a dead nobleman to make good his escape, and finds himself stuck in the middle of a political battle over the throne.

Marian (Cate Blanchett), who was married to the dead guy, is forced to carry on the charade with this stranger playing her husband, and finds she likes him better than the old one.

The movie grows silly in the middle, and briefly is enjoyable for it. But then the heavy, portentous drama reasserts itself, and we're treated to dull speeches about nobility residing in the heart of the common man, yada-yada.

This bewildering film is schizophrenic: It couldn't decide which of the many faces of the Robin Hood mythology to wear, so it tries them all on.

Once again, the trend of underwhelming movies arriving on video with stupendous extras continues.

On DVD, a director's cut adds 15 minutes to the film's run time, and 10 deleted scenes add 13 minutes more. A 62-minute making-of documentary touches on all aspects of production, and includes the insight by producer Brian Grazer that they were aiming for "the 'Gladiator' version of Robin Hood."

A digital copy of the film is also included.

On upgrading to Blu-ray, you gain "The Art of Nottingham," which includes hundreds of still images documenting pre-production, costumes, behind-the-scenes and other goodies.

The centerpiece is a "director's notebook" that includes pop-up video with commentary by Ridley Scott, which includes an interactive feature that allows you to pause, view other extras, and then resume.

The extras for "Robin Hood" are right on target. Would that more good movies could receive such a splendid video release.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "The Town"

"The Town" is such a well-executed cops-and-robbers drama dripping with Boston flavor, it takes us a while before we realize it's built on a mountain of Hollywood clichés.

Ben Affleck, who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay, plays a careful bank robber who tosses his professional detachment out the window for the damsel-in-distress: The manager (Rebecca Hall) at the last bank he robbed.

Throw in a headstrong FBI agent (Jon Hamm) hot on his tail, a trigger-happy partner in crime (Jeremy Renner) and a local mob boss (Pete Postlethwaite) who won't let him walk away from the "family business," and the film practically churns itself out of a Screenwriting 101 class.

Oh, I almost forgot: This is the Affleck character's "one last job" before he calls it quits and heads to Florida.

(The film could have been even more pat -- I haven't read the novel on which it was based, Chuck Hogan's "Prince of Thieves," but I understand in the book the cop falls for the same girl.)

This review is sounding like a pan, but read the first half of the first sentence again: Affleck gives such a confident, authentic performance -- both in front of and behind the camera -- that these familiar tropes take on a lively, at times electric quality that make us feel like we're discovering them anew.

Renner is particularly good as Jim Coughlin, a crook and killer with two strikes against him, and swears there won't be a third. He accepts who he is, and is resigned to whatever fate a life of a crime holds for him. "If something goes down, we'll be holding court in the streets," he vows before a big heist.

When they were teenagers, Jim killed a guy to protect his best friend Doug MacRay (Affleck), doing nine years in prison without a peep. Maybe that's why Doug keeps him around as a wingman, despite Jim's tendency to shoot first, and ask no questions at all.

Affleck and his co-writers, Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, take pains to make Doug a sympathetic character. He methodically plans out his robberies, right down to knowing the biographies of the bank guards and nuking the surveillance video tapes in the microwave, so we respect his attention to detail -- especially his efforts to prevent violence.

Things go awry when Jim kidnaps Claire (Hall). She's released unharmed, but Jim is jumpy that she might gives clues to the feds. She cooperates with Special Agent Frawley (does the FBI have regular, un-special Agents?) but fails to pass on a key detail.

Doug agrees to shadow Claire, ends up bumping into her, and finds the attraction powerful, and mutual. Though they don't have a lot of scenes together, Affleck and Hall make the romance seem fleshy and real. I especially liked the undercurrent of class rivalry between them, with Doug a palooka Townie and Claire a yuppie interloper, or "Toonie."

That brings us to the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown, whose rough-hewn, cloistered personality bleeds into every scene. Affleck and the rest of the cast nail the Beantown accent -- with such success, in fact, that I occasionally had trouble understanding them -- and the great cinematography (by Robert Elswit) captures the hardscrabble charm of the mean streets.

Affleck's always had screen presence, and with his hair starting to gray a little, it gives him a bit of authority he didn't have during his matinee idol days. "The Town" isn't quite as good as Affleck's directorial debut, the terrific "Gone Baby Gone," but clearly this is the work of a guy who knows how to tell stories.

Imagine what he could do with something a bit more original.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Robin Hood"

When I first heard they were making a new Robin Hood movie, I wondered whatever for. After 100 years of cinematic depictions, from Douglas Fairbanks to Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner, from heroic icon to revisionism to parody and back again, what more is there to add?

Later I saw trailers for this big-budget extravaganza starring Russell Crowe, and couldn't puzzle out its purpose. Based on the grimy world depicted in the preview, I guessed it was aiming for that whole vérité man-behind-the-legend thing.

Now I've actually seen the film, and I'm still having a hard time figuring out what the hell it's about.

Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland deliver a befuddled fusion of Robin Hood mythology, history lesson and their own, mostly kooky, contributions. It starts out as a weary condemnation of war, briefly flirts with being a rowdy boys' adventure of looting and wenching (this is actually the most enjoyable part) and then grows bloated with Braveheart-esque self-importance.

"There's no difference between a knight and any other man, other than what he wears," Robin intones.

Instead of just "Robin Hood," you could have called it "Before the Hood," since it tells the story of how Robin came to be an outlaw, rather than what happened after. No robbing of the rich, and certainly no giving to the poor here.

(I have to add that Robin's looking a bit long in the tooth to be starting a new career. If I were feeling puckish, I might point out that Crowe is the same age Sean Connery was when he played the pathetic over-the-hill Robin in 1976's "Robin and Marian.")

Many other Robin Hood legends are given the boot. Instead of being the son of the poor but noble Baron Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow), our hero is an anonymous archer in King Richard the Lionheart's army named Robin Longstride. He only impersonates Robert Loxley, Walter's son, in order to escape to England after deserting from Richard's crusade.

Marian (Cate Blanchett) is no maid but Robert's wife, perpetually dour at having been abandoned a week after her marriage, now widowed and faced with a common yeoman usurping her husband's status.

Prince John (Oscar Isaac) is here, a preening metrosexual wannabe monarch, wearing an aura of luscious black curls and a perpetual pout, conspiring against Richard and flaying the people for their taxes. The Sheriff of Nottingham also shows up, but as merely a bit player. (This is actually a return to roots; over the years the character kept getting inflated into the main heavy.)

The chief evildoer is Godfrey, played by Mark Strong, who apparently has become to big-budget villainy what Sam Worthington is to protagonists: Everybody's go-to guy. Godfrey is a childhood friend of John's who's secretly conspiring with King Philip of France to foment trouble and soften up England for the Gallic invasion.

William Marshall (William Hurt), Richard's loyal regent, oversees an army of spies and may be playing the sides off each other. John's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins), appears to be a major player, but then she abruptly disappears about halfway through the movie.

More frayed story threads abound. There's talk about the barons forcing John to sign a charter, which seems to be a reference to the Magna Carta (which the real King John did endorse in 1215). Walter entices Robin with knowledge about his long-lost father, but then a perplexing flashback throws his tale into higgledy-piggledy.

Oh, and Friar Tuck is raising bees to supply his underground booze trade, Walter asks Robin to impersonate Robert, and there's some unexplained feral boys running around the forest wearing masks and stealing food and generally acting as if they wandered out of the story of another guy in green tights.

When it comes to needless remakes of legendary heroes, Hollywood never wants to grow up.

2 stars out of four